Writing on Facebook on Wednesday, DeLonge explained: “I have brought together an elite team from CIA, DOD and the FMR Director of Advanced Programs at Lockheed Martin’s SkunkWorks.

His statement continued with an explanation of their first project – a vehicle that can travel “instantaneously through space, air and water by engineering the fabric of space-time”. He then asked for investors to contribute. See the full post and video below.

Hello, my name is Tom DeLonge from the Blink-182. I have brought together an elite team from CIA, DOD and the FMR…

Posted by Tom DeLonge on Wednesday, October 11, 2017

So far, 676 investors have contributed more than $320,000 to the ‘academy’. Its website lists the academy members as: a former deputy assistant Secretary of Defence for Intelligence; a former senior intelligence officer at the CIA; a former advanced systems director for aeronautical company Skunk Works; a former director of programs to investigate unidentified aerial threats; a group of ‘distinguished physicists’; a geneticist; a molecular biologist; and an ‘award-winning storyteller’.

In Instagram updates since the company launched on Wednesday, DeLonge has announced plans for an unscripted reality series about the Academy – including footage of “US Gov declassified videos of UFOs” – and has said another vehicle is being planned. “We are aiming to build a spaceship that turns into a ball of light… and disappears,” he wrote early this morning (October 14).

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Earlier this year Tom DeLonge won the award for UFO Researcher of the Year.